"The Unlikely Hero" Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) and David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) in "Independence Day" John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) in "The Green Mile" Wesley Crusher in....no...!...HELL no...!!!
Wheels of Tragedy-More common on TV. When ever we see multiple characters in multiple cars you know an accident is brewing. Doubly so if there is a storm.
There's a vogue-ish addition to that I call The Blindside (aka They Didn't See It Coming) where the camera's fixed on the driver/passenger(s) and the vehicle will be hit out of nowhere. Cue flying glass, etc...
Fist/gun Out of Nowhere - The camera has just panned around and shown us that the character is alone in the scene. Que close up shot and said character is suddenly getting punched by someone off camera. Was that person hiding behind the cameraman? Variations include having someone put a gun to the character's head from off screen.
...simple flyboy trying to live life and get into NASA in right place at right time surviving all odds picked for incredible mission no hope of success paired with equally unlikely hero no way this thing is gonna go but success anyway...and he coulda been at a bar-b- que!... "...nothin' but love for ya..."
The Third-Act Lull: The exact moment where a movie which has had a careful escalation of the plot, leading up to an exciting climactic moment where the action reaches a cresendo... except the problem is they're only two-thirds through the movie, so the carefully built escalation suddenly flat-lines for a while and they have to bring it all back up again for a second finale. Example: the original Star Wars maintains a carefully built escalation of events, which is released when the princess is saved and the Falcon escapes the Death Star..... whereupon they go into an extended sequence on Yavin which feels positively low-key compared to the entire movie up till that point, before again rising to a second exciting climax with the Death Star run itself.
An unlikely hero is someone who doesn't want to be or isn't someone you'd think of being a hero who becomes a hero in spite of that. Will Smith's character in ID4 is an Air Force pilot, alone already a pretty heroic thing. Will Smith is not an unlikely heron in ID4. That probably better describes Jeff Goldblum's character who isn't representative as a hero, isn't heroic but ends up doing a heroic thing. An unlikely hero isn't someone who ends up being a hero in spite of the odds against him or his original lot in life, since that would pretty much describe every movie hero ever.
Here are a couple of phrases I'd like to see in movies-- To a religious zealot: As a matter of fact I hate Charles Darwin! In fact, I hate him so much that I want him out of Wall Street and back in the jungle and the textbook where he belongs. To a jingoist Let each child be his own standard, each woman her own banner, and every man his own flag.